Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your QCOW file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert QCOW to another file type
To convert QCOW disk images to another format, you need QEMU or other Disk Image software.
Convert a file to QCOW
To convert other file formats to the "Virtualization Image" file type, you need software like QEMU or a similar tool.
About QCOW files
The .QCOW (QEMU Copy-On-Write) format is a legacy virtual disk image file used primarily by the QEMU processor emulator. While it allows a virtual machine to store data effectively by only writing changes relative to a backing file, it has been largely superseded by the more robust QCOW2 format. Users often struggle with .QCOW files because they are effectively "dead" technology; modern virtualization platforms like VMware Workstation or Oracle VirtualBox do not natively support this specific version without conversion. Furthermore, you cannot simply double-click these files in Windows or macOS to access the files inside, creating a "black box" scenario for archiving. To make these files usable, the best path is conversion: upgrade to QCOW2 for modern QEMU/KVM features (like snapshots and encryption), convert to VMDK for compatibility with VMware products, or transform to VHD for use with Microsoft Hyper-V. For direct file extraction, converting to a RAW image is often necessary to mount the disk on a host system.
Convert.Guru analyzes your QCOW file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert QCOW file to VMDK, RAW, QCOW2, OVA, ISO, VDI, VHD, VHDX, IMG, DMG, HDD or VBOX, you can use QEMU or similar software from the "Virtual Disk Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert VFD, DMG, OVA, IMA, VBOX, ADF, PVS, VHD, OVF, ISO, DSK or IMG files to QCOW, try QEMU or another comparable tool in the "Virtual Disk Storage" category.
The QCOW Converter Story
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our QCOW converter.